Before or After, at the Same Time: Rome, Milan, and Fabio Mauri, 1948-1968

The title refers to Mauri’s statement: “I can’t stay in step with my time. I am either before or after it, at the same time.” Taking the life of artist Fabio Mauri and the history of his family -a publishing dynasty with close connections to radical Italian art, poetry, cinema, philosophy, and literature- as a starting point for a re-examination of the forces shaping Italian visual culture between the end of the Second World War and the Years of Lead, this publication combines commissioned essays and first-person accounts with translated writings from the period to explore the ideas circulating in Rome and Milan in the 1950s and 1960s. The publication aspires to provide an alternative, anecdotal, and partial perspective on a turbulent period, drawing attention to the pivotal personal and professional networks that shaped postwar Italian art.